27 Aug
2011
27 Aug
'11
1:36 p.m.
On 08/27/2011 01:37 PM, Tony Duell wrote:
I suspect the docuemantion for the PERQ image processing software and
file formats is long gone, but...
Would you consider that to be a format in which large volumes of
images are stored today? ;)
I know that I'd much rather have ot print a
negative than try to decode
an uncodumented digital image file.
I'm right there with you on that. Fortunately, nearly all of them
that are actually being used anywhere are well-documented. Anyway, they may be docuemnted _now_ but in 100 eyars
time (or whatever)
it may not even be obviosu that it is an image file. If you take a film
or glass plate negative it's clear rto anyone (with reasonable eyesight)
that there is an image on it. It's also possible, jsut byu loking at it
to see roughtly what that image is, and that the intensities are
inverted. So you try the obviuos things to get the image back.
But given a digital image file, it's not obvious from looking at the
bytes that it even is an image, let alone how to decode it.
Too true. But I think society is long past the point where
information, at least most of it, just disappears from generation to
generation.
Of course a lot of people will argue that, pointing out obscure
things which have been lost, or are at risk of being lost due to their
obscurity, but I'm talking about things like...well, the JFIF image
format. (what is commonly yet erroneously called "JPEG")
Even old, proprietary, vendor-specific formats like BMP are trivial
to find documentation for. Some formats have even survived fruitless,
misguided attempts to make a quick buck by teams of lawyers at
short-sighted corporations run by stupid people (GIF).
Thanks to efforts like Bitsavers, technical documentation is at
nowhere near the level of risk it was even as recently as a decade ago.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire
Port Charlotte, FL